Author archives: Simon

 

 

Creative Writing Workshop this Saturday

The Creative Writing Workshop with Ashok Ferrey will be taking place this Saturday (19th November) at the Youth Centre Conference room. If you are into writing fiction or would like to start writing this will be a great opportunity to learn from a published author. Just the last few seats are now available. Get yours [...]

 

Creative Writing Workshop

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Many have asked me if they have to have written anything to participate in this work. The answer is a big NO. You need not have written a single line of English literature to participate. The only requirement is a desire to write and to write well. Some have also asked me if this workshop [...]

 

 

 

My 5 Best Headphones for Music

Headphones are a great way to enjoy music and a good pair of headphones will go a long way into making the experience of listening to your favorite music worthwhile. I own several pairs of headphones that cost below $100. For me anything more expensive is just overkill unless you are ready to invest quite [...]

 

5 Great Educational iPad Apps for Kids

Kids love the iPad as they can fiddle around and play games and learn things anywhere, anytime. Below is a list of 5 great educational iPad apps for kids between ages 2 to 8 as determined by their usage by my kids on their iPad. Please understand that while playing educational games on the iPad [...]

 

 

A Donkey Walks into a Bar

When my kids are sad or moody I make a face and tell this joke: A donkey walks into a bar. The barman says, “Why the long face?”. Initially this joke was met with curiosity and soon they would forget their mood. It worked for sometime. But now when I start telling that joke they [...]

 

Rozaina (Rosanna)

Rosanna’s been on my mind the whole day today. Beautiful, rich shuffle rock that has a smooth break and is fun to sing along. Possibly one of the best shuffle-rock pieces ever done! Here’s Toto singing Rosanna live in Amsterdam on their 25th anniversary. Song is from the 80′s (1982) when music was, well, music. [...]

 

Music today

I was in the supermarket with my eldest when on the piped-in music came a song that made me flinch in disgust and make a quick exit. “What’s a love handle?”, he had asked me upon hearing the song. The station was playing Love Handles by the artist that has the uncanny ability to sing [...]

 

Annoying iPhone UI Problem

This happens to me quite often: You’re on a call and the line drops due to some network problem and the connection is lost. Or, say, you’re trying to call someone but their line is busy. In such an event iPhone will display this (or similar) screen with the following button arrangement: Now, if you [...]

 

Fireflies by Owl City

A fantastically refreshing song with an enchanting and beautiful video among today’s otherwise garbage they call mainstream music. Especially nice to see the Texas Instruments’ Speak & Spell. It brings back a lot of memories. Released in 2009 – so not that recent.

 

Kids!

My 5 year old daughter, Sarah, yesterday discovered 4 new things thanks to her elder 7 year old brother: That beef comes from cows that have been killed. Her school shoes are made of leather that come from a cow that has been killed. Chicken meat comes from “hens” that have been killed. Tuna comes [...]

 

Convert your driving license to Sri Lanka license

Here’s how to convert your foreign driving license Sri Lanka driving license. Before you proceed it is best to inquire with your embassy office in Colombo about translating your driving license into English if it is in another language. Have the letter done one day in advance so that you can start your day at [...]

 

Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan

I gauge the quality of a movie, of how it tells the story effectively, by the amount of time I spend thinking about it after watching. About 90% of the movies I watch usually don’t require much afterthought. Most are forgotten almost immediately. But few movies leave a lasting impression. Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan is [...]

 

Mathematics, what?

Remember Mathematics? No? Well, anyway, here is an interesting way to look at some aspects of this most essential of subjects (that some us snoozed through in class). It is from an interesting (and quite astute) Youtuber named Vi. Worth subscribing to. Worth showing in schools even.

 

Geminids Meteor Shower

The Geminids meteor shower will occur tonight and is the final major meteor shower of the year and it’s also one of the most eye-catching and easy to see. The best time to observe will be was between 12:00am – 04:30am early morning of 14th December. I will have my tripod and camera setup to [...]

 

Biosphere

You wake up and find yourself in a capsule or life-support pod of some sort. You manage to open a hatch and emerge. It is cold. Maybe it is the Arctic. It is overcast and the land is totally white as far as your eye can see. There is silence except for the sound of [...]

 

TextMarker Firefox Extension updated

I’ve updated the TextMarker! Firefox extension to support the latest release of the browser. I had been neglecting this little piece of software for a long time. With over 250 weekly downloads this is something I should have done ages ago. TextMarker! is a Firefox extension that lets you highlight text on webpages and allows [...]

 

3 Years of hosting with Dreamhost.com

Three years and 5 months to be precise. Dreamhost hosting is cheap, fast and as reliable as any hosting service in their category. I have 2 accounts with them on their shared hosting plan. Between the two accounts I am hosting 19 domains and utilizing 6 GB of space in total! All for less than [...]

 

A Necessary Blog

A couple of months ago I decided to give up blogging but someone and something has changed my mind. Subcorpus’s blog at www.subcorpus.net with it’s fine reviews, rants and stories and articles is my primary source of inspiration. It is refreshing to see Subcorpus change his style of writing. If I were asthmatic I would have stayed [...]

 

 

The artificial composer

I first listened and then I read it and for more than a mere minute I was completely dumbfounded. It was me trying to swallow the information in front of me. “Emily Howell could be the next big hit in the classical music world. She has already received critical acclaim for her compositions and secured [...]

 

Some Classical Greats

I have always loved classical music and know many great works by the best in the world. I share this love for classical music with my children who, although are not old enough to know the composers, can instantly recognise many individual pieces. Unfortunately I have only been to 3 concerts so far but I [...]

 

 

Kiss from a rose

15 years on and it still remains a classic ballad – one that takes me back to the mid 90s, a time when falling in love was like a headlong crash into a thorny rose bush. There could never be a way out without leaving a few scratches here and there. The only solution was [...]

 

The Man from Earth

It is seldom that movie is able to intrigue me in such a way as to wish it all to be true. The Man from Earth had me glued, unblinking, to the end. And at the end I was thoroughly satisfied, almost gleefully happy and childishly excited. Here is a movie that asks a rather [...]

 

 

 

The Hell with Martyrs

Would you believe it I am actually writing this 2 weeks after watching the movie and still my heart starts a heavy pounding when I think about it. Yes, Martyrs, the French horror flick by director Pascal Laugier has left a permanent feeling of discomfort within me. It is not so much your average fear [...]

 

Let there be light, helloo!

I just got this from Pharyngula and I must say, what a refreshingly hilarious show this is. It is original (or is it?), quirky to just the right level, and just damned funny. Kind of old seeing how the first season was 2 years back. I suppose Mr. Diety forgot to enlighten me on this [...]

 

12 Rounds of Stupidity

I consider myself pretty good at selecting good movies but after last night’s movie I realized I was taking it for granted and being foolish. See, last night I went to purchase a movie from one of the hundreds of pirated DVD outfits in town and asked the guys there for suggestions as I didn’t [...]

 

 

Then and Now

The song is Painted in Black by The Final Revelations performing live on stage at the Olympus theater way back in 1994 in a concert called Painted Sound Illusion. The bassist, on a beautiful Fender Jazz Bass, looks familiar, ahem. Oh the headbanging! Good grief! The song was composed and written by Fasy while the [...]

 

Video: Masters of the Surf

Here’s a new video of surfers at Raalhugandu. Enjoy the view. And don’t forget to turn up the volume a little. You might want to check out the same video on Vimeo. The quality seem a little better somehow.

 

Blueberry Girl

A beautiful poem written and read by Neil Gaiman – the wordsmith and conjuror of magical lands, who showed me that there’s a wonderful world undiscovered and untouched and it is called Imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

Campaign posters I'd like to see

Posters of candidates campaigning for parliament are everywhere. Strangely and quite disturbingly none of the posters I’ve seen so far have contact details of the candidates listed. They all stare at the viewer blankly. These candidates below will contact you – sometimes in the dead of the night. Enjoy! (Click to enlarge) Maybe Chuck Norris [...]

 

 

 

 

The Elusive Life of Benjamin Button

Few select movies that I’ve watched actually make me think many hours after watching them. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of them. For some reason this movie has had a profound affect on me. It has once again reminded me that life is magical and sacred. And yet it is short and [...]

 

Science: Transparent head and Tubular Eyes

This must be one of the most freakiest creatures in nature. The species of fish commonly known as Barreleyes have a transparent head inside which resides a pair of tubular eyes. That’s right, a transparent head with tubular eyes inside! This deep-sea fish has been known to science since 1939 when it was first described. [...]

 

Deranged

There are those who do not conform to the norms of civil society and there are those who are completely deranged and leave the fold of humanity. Here’s that very phenomenon…in…penguins.

 

Big Dog: the creepy and the funny

Big Dog is actually a four-legged robotic dog created by Boston Dynamics. I was simply amazed by the advancement of the robot’s maneuverability. In the video below you can see it climbing slopes, treading ice, balancing in slippery frozen terrain, making its way through rubble etc. How the four legs react in these situations (to [...]

 

MvBlogosphere Companion Extension 0.2

What is it? This is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that enables hiding and highlighting of blogs from the mvblogs.org listing. Say, you are at work or you let your children use the computer and you know that some blogs listed on mvblogs.org are inappropriate for a work environment and children, how [...]

 

Crayon Physics

My kids absolutely love this one. Here’s the description from the author: Crayon Physics is a 2D physics puzzle / sandbox game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics. [...]

 

A Wonderful Life

I’ve been meaning to start this blog for a while now. Well, here it is and to celebrate the occasion I want to present to you a song from my school days. I remember a bunch of us would try and play this on a keyboard at my place. I like the video as it [...]